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why wait to last minute to have your mowers ready. If someone call you, you get your stuff go! I'm not go piss off a good customer because my stuff wasn't ready and if they want to pay me two extra weeks of mowing I'm ok with that

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I have already done a Spring Clean up and have another for Wednesday.
and one Friday weather pending. I prepped all my equipment before I put it away for the winter all I had to do is ad gas in stall a battery or two and I was up and going.

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why wait to last minute to have your mowers ready. If someone call you, you get your stuff go!

Easier said than done. My equipment is not ready for a reason. Let's not forget that it's not even April yet.....

I'm not go piss off a good customer because my stuff wasn't ready and if they want to pay me two extra weeks of mowing I'm ok with that

What is a 'good' customer? I never had one of those before!
Personally, taking my equipment out for one measly client 1 time during the time of year I'm not fond of, not interested. I have a lot of other things to do right now.

I prepped all my equipment before I put it away for the winter

Lucky! My last day out was late November sometime, so it was a big rush to prepare for winter, everything had to be put away and I really had no time to tune anything up.. Not to mention it is easier for me to pay for repairs during the Spring, as money is always coming in. Other than that, it's always nice to tune everything up before you put it away. I just couldn't.

Did any of the customers catch you early on and because you didn't know how to respond, you ended up using their equipment?

I get offered this a lot by elderly people, but my answer is always, "No".

I don't want to wait half an hour for them to open up their garage so I can dig out a 30 year old mower that's in worse shape than my own. Then I'd have to clean it out before putting it away, while making more small talk in the process. Also, the client will most likely feel as though I owe them a discount in the end... Heaven forbid that it's electric. Regardless, like Mark had said;

I think that they think they are doing you a favor by letting you use their really slow and beat-down equipment. It would take 3 hours to do a 15 minute lawn with that junk.

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Only had a customer say this once, an older lady....because she thought my 36' ExMark walk behind was a push mower..."you can use that riding mower"....

Your equipment should always be ready (at least here in SC)....it shouldn't take more than 2 days to get anything fixed...and if it does, look around for a new place to fix your equipment that truly looks out for commercial guys. As for a flat, fix it the night it goes flat....

I will go out for a measly one customer... you never know what that one customer will turn into....a full-time one or you could attain his 3 neighbors because they are impressed with your work.

I guess I just stay on top of that because there really is not much of a winter here and there are fall and spring cleanups all the time during the slow time.

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I truly feel sorry for you guys 'up north'. I did two yard cleanups in January, and started mowing in february. I keep my equipment ready to run every day as mowing here is a 12 month thing. The good part is that I offer free snow removal on every yearly contract and have not had to buy a snow shovel yet.

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I haven't stopped all winter. I was buying new gear getting stuff fixed or fixing it myself doing a little snow removal, Networking redesigned my web site kept up my Facebook twitter and LinkedIn accounts. Designed new fliers for the fall
read 10 books on lawn care /landscaping. What I want now is to get back to mowing so I can relax.

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I just got a call from an elderly 'retired' man who gave me so much trouble last year by always stopping me to chit chat... He wasn't even a client until this year (he's also a neighbor of an existing client), now he calls telling me his friend wants to hire me... another retired person...

Anyway, it's not easy dealing with the elderly, and the bigger you get the more difficult it becomes to manage your time. You could lose half a day with chit chat alone.

As for going out of my way for a single client who wants something done a month earlier... I would rather not mess up my equipment and leave it sitting for a month until we actually begin this season. I don't have the time to really worry about labor right now, office work needs to be done as of now. Government wants their money too.

There is still a lot of planning to be done, and over here it's kind of unusual for companies to be starting this early. Snow pickets still need to be removed lol.